Reviews 137

P.Y. Ho and F.P. Lisowski, A Brief History of Chinese Medicine and Its Influ- ence. 2nd ed. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company, 1998. xii, 114 pp.

Chao Yüan-ling

[Chao Yüan-ling is currently associate professor in History at Middle Tennessee State University. She received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA in 1995. Her research is in the history of medicine in late imperial China. At present, she is working on a manuscript titled "Medicine and Society in Late Imperial China: A Study of Physicians in Suzhou."]

The history of medicine in China is still a relatively young field and one glance at the bookshelves on the history of medicine at any library will reveal the pau- city of books on Chinese medicine and its history in the English language. That is why this book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on the history of medi- cine in China. This book is a revision of Ho and Lisowski's previous work titled Concepts of Chinese Science and Traditional Healing Arts: A Historical Review (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company, 1993). The thinness of this volume belies the ambition of its authors and the comprehensive nature of its contents. In 114 pages, they strive to introduce the basic concepts of traditional Chinese medicine, outline the major historical development of medicine in China from the 29th century BC to the 20th century, and investigate the influence of Chinese medicine on the outside world. The authors make it clear that this book is intended as an introduction to the field, hoping to stimulate readers to pursue further research. Early works on the history of medicine have generally portrayed Chinese medicine as an inert and static body of knowledge. For example, in A Short His- tory of Medicine, Erwin H. Ackerknecht claims that both Indian and Chinese medicine "froze relatively early into rigid dogmatism and continued in this static form throughout the centuries to the present time."1 Ackerknecht also believed that Western interest in acupuncture was merely a fad and any efficacy from treatment was due "through suggestion."2 More recent works have done much to revise this picture and paid more attention to tracing and elaborating on the the- ory and practice of traditional Chinese medicine.3

1 Erwin H. Ackerknecht, A Short History of Medicine, revised edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 45-46. 2 Ibid., p. 45. 3 See for example Lois N. Manger, A History of Medicine (New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1982) and Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,1997). 138 EASTM 17 (2000)

The recent growth of interest in Chinese medicine as an alternative to West- ern biological medicine has generated a proliferation of works on the subject. Most popular English language books on Chinese medicine tend to provide a general outline of the theories of yin and yang and qi, focusing particularly on the practice of acupuncture, but little attempt is made to place the development of Chinese medicine within the intellectual and social background from which it emerged. Academic works which attempt to situate medicine within the intel- lectual and social landscape are few. For readers who are looking for more than just a narration of the basic concepts in Chinese medicine, this brief introduction to the history of Chinese medicine will provide a better understanding of the intellectual and social forces that helped to shape medical tradition in China. The book is divided into two parts. Part I gives an overview of the major concepts and history of Chinese medicine. Part II looks at the influence of Chi- nese medicine outside of China. For Part II, the authors have chosen to focus on Japan and the Islamic world. Traditional Chinese medicine is based upon an elaborate set of theories. The discussion on the basic concepts of traditional Chinese medicine draws much on Ho's earlier work Li, Qi and Shu: An Introduction to Science and Civilization in China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985). Here again the authors explain the concepts of li , qi , and shu as the basic principles under which operated "from astronomy to astrology, from alchemy to magic, from ethics to politics, and from philosophy to the art of healing" (p. 15). It is from these basic principles that yin and yang and wuxing are born. The fundamental principles that permeate Chinese science and medicine originate from the traditional belief in the harmony of nature and the close relationship between heaven (tian ), earth (di ), and man (ren ). In this small volume, the authors provide a glimpse of the rich canonical tra- dition of Chinese medicine. Two of the earliest works of Chinese medicine are attributed to ancient legendary sages, lending them authority and prestige. These are the Shennong bencaojing (Pharmacopoeia of the Heavenly Husbandman) and the Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor's Manual of Corporeal Medicine). Both were compiled over a period of time by different authors and reached their final forms probably some time during the Western Han dynasty (206 BC - 24 AD). The Shennong bencaojing is China's earliest pharmacopoeia and predates Greek and Roman texts by many centuries. Shennong (The Heavenly Husbandman) is considered the legendary founder of Chinese medicine and represented the earliest phase of medicine among the Chinese people. Early medicine was closely intertwined with magic, but by the time of the Zhou dynasty (11th to 3rd centuries BC) they had separated. It was also during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of the East- ern Zhou that the earliest medical writings were compiled. These were finalized during the Western Han dynasty and attributed to the legendary Huangdi (Yel- low Emperor). The Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor's Manual of Corpo- real Medicine) remains the most authoritative of medical writings, and, together